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Many readers have sent in an update to yesterday's story about the Department of Homeland Security's seizure of torrent-finder.com, a domain they believe to be involved in online piracy. As it turns out, this was just one of dozens of websites that were targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"In announcing that operation, John T. Morton, the assistant secretary of ICE, and representatives of the Motion Picture Association of America called it a long-term effort against online piracy, and said that suspected criminals would be pursued anywhere in the world. 'American business is under assault from counterfeiters and pirates every day, seven days a week,' Mr. Morton said. 'Criminals are stealing American ideas and products and distributing them over the Internet.'"
The TorrentFreak article we discussed yesterday has been updated with a list of the blocked sites.

"Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty."

“the few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to a few persons.”

Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk. We are seeing are the final nails in the Constitution's coffin. Their is no Constitutional justification for the seizing of these sites. It violates the core of the agreements made between the people and the Government. I really wish we could return to being a republic, where each state minds its own business but keep the Federal Government operating within the bounds of the Constitution. The people in Texas can have anarchy or whatever and the people in Massachussetes can have their pristine Government institutions. Those unhappy with their state are Constitutionally guaranteed the right to move.

I bet dollars to doughnuts that when net neutrality passes, buried deep in the legislation's text will be stronger measures than what we're seeing today.

The websites in these cases amount to a storefront to distribute fake goods or copyrighted materials. When this happens with physical storefronts, they get shut down. I don't really see how this is any different.

This isn't about free speech, no liberties were lost, this is about people breaking the law and reasonable steps are being taken to stop them. You shouldn't fear the government as a result of this. Take off your tinfoil hat.

You don't get convicted/punished until proven guilty, that doesn't mean they don't shut down the operation when it's obvious they are actively selling fake goods right now. It is the courts job to decide what criminal charges may exist. Perhaps the shop owner didn't know they were fake? Just because the owner may not be the person criminally liable, that doesn't mean you allow the operation to continue.

It was obvious these sites were selling fake goods and distributing copyrighted works. They shut them down and the owner's get to plead their case about how they didn't know or whatever their case is. The site still gets shut down now if they are breaking laws now.

No, the police will show up and shut down physical stores for selling illegal things/things illegally. Perhaps they do need a judge to sign off on it, but presumably the DHS had its own paperwork in order.

Do not ever assume that the Department of Homeland Security could find its own bottom with a strip search and a full body X-ray. Due to various laws such as the Patriot Act, they've been protected from having to actually pay attention to civil rights. They are _extremely_ careless of "having their paperwork in order".

This is one of the complaints about ICE and DHS.. they tend to exempt themselves from silly things like courts and constitutional amendments because they claim things that cross the boarder are not protected. This is why they can do things like search your laptop without cause even though normal police can not do this.

This is one of the complaints about ICE and DHS.. they tend to exempt themselves from silly things like courts and constitutional amendments because they claim things that cross the boarder are not protected. This is why they can do things like search your laptop without cause even though normal police can not do this.

The Supreme Court has generally backed them up on this, so it's not hard to understand why. The real question is this: since the disease of unaccountability has a one hundred percent infection rate of organizations that suffer from it... why do we continue to allow it? I do not care who you are, I do not care how honorable you may think you are, if you have power over me you require effective oversight, and you must be held accountable for whatever actions (or inactions) you perform in my name, and the name of my fellow citizens. That is so goddamn basic to civilized society (human nature being what it is) that any law, or ruling, that successfully eliminates such protections should be enough to have a lawmaker or a judge removed from office

Period. Governance by Patriot Act does not work, not if you want to live in anything resembling a free society, not if you want to live unafraid of your own leaders. Let's face a few facts here: Americans are more at risk from amoral or criminal acts on the part of their various governments (local, State and Federal) than they are of terrorism or outright war. That's not how the Founders intended us to live.

The mechanism to accomplish what you state is called an injunction [wikipedia.org]. If party A is doing something that harms party B and the cessation of the activity cannot wait until trial, party B asks a judge to issue a temporary injunction. A and B show up in court, and if the judge believes B, he orders A to stop under penalty of contempt of court.

That's how due process is supposed to work. Note that both parties have their say. What the DHS did is not due process.

The majority of the sites were selling knock-off physical goods - it's quite easy to make a distinction there. I only saw one site on the list that was piracy-related, torrent-finder.com, although it looks like a number of sites were selling DVDs of pirated material which you could make a valid argument about either way (I'd argue they're like counterfeits; those sites tend to target ignorant people looking for a deal, not slashdotters with a bittorrent client).

If you would have bothered to RTFA you would have seen other than that one torrent site nearly all of the ones shut down were selling things like "Windows 7 Ultimate just $25! Passes WGA!" and "iron Man 2 DVD just $2!" and that kind of shit. They were the classic KIRF knockoffs and counterfeiting sites and NOT a concerted effort to take down torrent sites.

So unless you are really down for home burnt Windows copies with the malware conveniently added for you and Romex watches I don't see what the big whoop is. You try to sell fake Windows discs and counterfeit DVDs on the street corner they shut you down, how is this ANY different?

Innocent until proven guilty, or even better, the presumption of innocence, only applies in the court. YOU have the presumption of innocence and your accuser must overcome that.

These DNS entries were seized with a court order where enough evidence was shown to take action. No actual property was seized. The servers, files, original sites, goods, etc. are still in the hands of the owners. They'll have due process and the presumption of innocence if and when they are brought into court. Since I'm sure most of these owners are outside of the US, court will never happen, though.

A Domain name is personal property, a court order taking it from someone without notice of the opportunity to respond to a complaint violates the second principle of natural justice, Audi alteram partem, a important backbone to our legal system. The concept of Audi alteram partem is extremely sacred in common law and requires the other side at least the opportunity to be heard before any action is taken. This is reinforced by several portions of the US Constitution and endless relevant case law. Any action, in any common law court, requires notice to be given and a reasonable time to respond to the allegations prior to and decision made by a court. You cant take someone property in absentia without at least giving them reasonable notice. PERIOD.

A Domain name is personal property, a court order taking it from someone without notice of the opportunity to respond to a complaint violates the second principle of natural justice, Audi alteram partem, a important backbone to our legal system. The concept of Audi alteram partem is extremely sacred in common law and requires the other side at least the opportunity to be heard before any action is taken. This is reinforced by several portions of the US Constitution and endless relevant case law. Any action, in any common law court, requires notice to be given and a reasonable time to respond to the allegations prior to and decision made by a court. You cant take someone property in absentia without at least giving them reasonable notice. PERIOD.

Well, considering that the US government has gone so far as to throw out the nearly 800 year-old requirement of Habeus Corpus, it is not surprising that they are doing all they can to destroy any and all vestiges of civilized law. All that corporations and the US government ultimately wants is "fuck with us, or have something we want to take, and we will destroy you" kind of law.

Wouldn't matter anyway. Asset forfeiture laws already permit seizure of real property without due process. The trick is to accuse the property (which has no rights of its own) of the crime. Pretty cool, huh?

As with most crimes in progress, the law allows the police to take action to stop the crime and seize the evidence. The disposition of the evidence and means of committing the crime will be dealt with as part of whatever trial is coming.

In this case, it looks like a ICE took down a bunch of sellers of counterfeit goods and may have overreached on the torrent site. That said, we'll all soon learn what the relationship of torrent-finder.com is to the rest of the seized domains.

Probably because they convinced a judge that sites like torrent-finder.com were being used almost exclusively by those deliberately breaking the law, which of course they could argue simply by observing the publicly available content those sites were advertising, while the major search engines are predominantly used by everyday people for legal activities and because of their automated nature may also be used by people looking for other purposes.

Fortunately, unlike a significant proportion of Slashdot posters, the average judge does understand the difference, can identify when a group of law-breakers is taking the piss, and will authorise the relevant authorities to do something about it where the law permits.

It's odd how the freeloaders are always quick to claim that IP is not real property, infringing copyright is not theft, they wouldn't have bought it anyway, etc., yet just because the authorities changed a few records in a DNS database after seeking a court order and acting with full judicial oversight, the sky is falling and it's some profound invasion of their fundamental human rights or something. Hypocrisy, meet Denial; Denial, this is Hypocrisy.

Apparently a US court has issued a warrant permitting this action. Given that they are presumably far more qualified to interpret US law than I am as a non-lawyer from outside the US, perhaps you should take the matter up with them?

And the cognitive dissonance is not in sticking meticulously to the distinction between physical property and IP, it's in basing much of the advocacy for infringing copyright on the distinction, but then crying like a baby just because the government flipped a few bits that also did not harm anyone's personal property, put anyone in jail, or otherwise cause any actual, demonstrable harm to anyone. Either control of data can have a real world value worthy of legal protection or it can't, but the position of the freeloaders in this discussion appears to be that information they want to take has no value but the information they want to control is sacrosanct. I can't see that as anything but transparent hypocrisy.

No, they (the owners) have access to the original via their hosting provider, and direct via IP, and possibly via physical access to the hosting servers. They didn't shut down the servers or change the data on them in any way, just seized the domain names that other random people use to access it.

just because the government flipped a few bits that also did not harm anyone's personal property, put anyone in jail, or otherwise cause any actual, demonstrable harm to anyone.

As a U.S. citizen who lives here, I'm going to disagree with you, primarily because you comparing apples to... well, to something that isn't even a fruit.

Many, many business owners depend for their livelihood upon a functioning Web site. So don't try to tell me that a potential sale lost due to a copyright infringer's making an illegal copy is in any way the same as closing the doors on someone's business. Because, for a Web-based operation, shutting down DNS for their site is just what you've done. Put

Several people seem to be making an argument like yours, so let's step back for a moment and analyse what you're saying.

In one sentence, you say that many business owners depend on having a functioning web site for their business. Sure, I'll buy that; I run businesses with on-line elements myself, and downtime is no fun.

In the next sentence, you make a common anti-copyright argument about "potential" lost sales. Again, there is some merit there: I certainly wouldn't claim that every illegally distributed copy of a work results in an actual lost sale.

The trouble is, you can no more prove that a web site going down cost a sale (or caused some other form of damage to a non-commercial site) than you can prove that giving someone an illegal copy of some music/movie/software did. We could probably agree that some significant amount of damage is being done in many such cases, but we couldn't accurately quantify that damage in any objective way.

Given that people who are almost certainly infringing copyright are frequently getting away with it on legal technicalities, and awards of damages in the few cases that have gone to court have been either limited initially or reduced on appeal because the original award was disproportionate to the proven actual damages, I find it hard to have much sympathy with hypothetical arguments about how knocking out domains that are probably being used mostly or entirely for illegal purposes is somehow causing some huge loss to some legitimate business.

I think that the grandparent's argument of the boils down to the fact that stealing physical goods deprives the owner of those goods, whilst copying it does not deprive them of the ability to use it.

The trouble is, while the anti-copyright crowd keep making that argument, it isn't really true.

Suppose you make your money by producing creative works. Typically, the up-front cost of that creation is high, but the marginal cost of copying and distribution is low. In most cases, you will market the product at a relatively low price, in order to amortise the sunk costs over the entire consumer base and sell at a cost the market will bear.

The major advantage of copyright over most other legal frameworks that I have seen proposed is that it supports this sharing of costs among the consumer base, so that many people can each contribute a small part of the overall cost but all can benefit from the entire work. This makes the creation and distribution of many works viable where relying on direct funding seems unlikely to work.

The economics of the entire industry depend on this mechanic working. However, while copying does not deprive the original holder of the material of their own copy, it certainly could have a potential impact on the market. If you reduce the size of that market, then you reduce the number of people contributing to the pool that pays (or doesn't pay) for the original cost of the work, which affects the financial viability of the product in the first place. Equally, for works that are going to break even anyway, reducing the size of the market will reduce the profit that the work makes, which is a disincentive to invest more in order to produce better works.

Some people claim that content providers are making enough from paying customers anyway, but that's a silly argument for several reasons. Firstly, it ignores the fundamental unfairness of the law-abiding subsidising the law-breaking. Secondly, it doesn't work in the limit: if we legalised copying and everyone behaved as the law-breakers do today, then the creators would have no income stream and the incentive to create and share new works would be gone. Thirdly, "content providers" in these claims usually actually means Big Media/"MAFIAA", and ignores the fact that many small organisations and individuals create valuable content and are just trying to make a living from it, and many small businesses and individual careers come to an early end because they can't make enough money.

Some people claim that you can't assume every illegal copy represents a lost sale. Well, no, of course you can't. But it's equally absurd to pretend that everyone who would have bought a work legally still does so even though they already have an illegal copy of the material. People used to claim that they were "just trying" works to "see if they like them before they buy", but since these days we have hard statistics from things like recent games with on-line elements and the popularity of specific works on P2P networks, we know very well that huge numbers of people are ripping products that are new/popular and continuing to use them well beyond just trying them out.

Some people claim that they are somehow doing content providers a favour by "marketing" their product for free. It's a good job not everyone takes that view, or there would be a whole lot of marketing but still no sales, and marketing is a cost centre rather than a revenue generator. And of course, content providers have the option to distribute taster material or even entire products for free if they wish to do so; if the marketing argument really does work, then those providers who give their work away for free will benefit and market forces will promote this behaviour in the long term. Given that this hasn't happened in the past decade, I won't hold my breath, though.

In short, while copying a work illegally may not deprive the original holder of a copy, it most certainly can deprive them of their ability to use it.

You're also presuming that [courts] act ethically, reasonably, and neutrally in their interpretations of the law.

That is true, but you have to start with some implicit trust for any civilised legal system to be worth anything.

If your courts are not going to act in a fair way according to the law, then you have far bigger problems than the current state of copyright law or a government agency rerouting a few DNS entries. I'm sure in some places in the world that is true, but I think it's rather outside the scope of this debate.

There is a court order for shutting down this sites and the article refers to it.

So can we cut the "freedom", "internet only", etc malarkey. It is all above board and pretty much following proper due process and established procedures. If you sell counterfeit DVDs from a stall at the market you will get shut down. Do not see why you should not be shut down if you sell counterfeit media off a website.

Now the definition of counterfeit, grey, illegal copying, etc are all an entir

By that argument, Google [google.com] should be #1 on their list of domains to seize. However, the first amendment has been violated as it uses absolute terms: "Congress shall make no law...". The sites were linking to other sites that carried the questionable material. This is the same as when a journalist is given illegally obtained information and then prints it. The journalist is not breaking the law and did not conspire to break the law and thus cannot be held liable for the crime.

Who determines that the websites in question are distributing copyrighted materials?

I don't call it due process when your property is seized by way of court order resulting from a hearing in which you weren't allowed to give your side of the story.

The owner of Torrent Finder found out about the action after the site was seized. (even though the site hosts no torrents and returns search results through embedded iframes) So the site is gone until he can convince the government to give it back.

Yeah, that's my America. Give the government the power to punish without so much as a public hearing. After all there's no chance THAT power will be abused.

The websites in these cases amount to a storefront to distribute fake goods or copyrighted materials. When this happens with physical storefronts, they get shut down. I don't really see how this is any different.

This isn't about free speech, no liberties were lost, this is about people breaking the law and reasonable steps are being taken to stop them. You shouldn't fear the government as a result of this. Take off your tinfoil hat.

So, a torrent search engine is now a storefront for distributing fake good or copyrighted materials?

You're smarter then you keep your mouth closed and finger far from the keyboard. Really.

The websites in these cases amount to a storefront to distribute fake goods or copyrighted materials. When this happens with physical storefronts, they get shut down. I don't really see how this is any different.

If they get shut down (debatable), they get shut down by courts of law. After due process.

Ironically, of course, grabbing 75 domain names as part of a taxpayer funded handjob for the MPAA's bottom line is a tiny; but highly visible, slice of ICE's activities and, by far, not the most sinister.

This is an organization, after all, that has approximately 380,000 detainees enjoying its involuntary hospitality at any given time, in a nationwide network of facilities that range from "low profile" to "seriously shadowy". A fair percentage of them are undesirables of various stripes, so the public is wholly uninterested; but the process is opaque enough that their decisions aren't exactly subject to rigorous double checking. On occasion, a mysterious death or tragicomic "American citizen of the brown persuasion accidentally repatriated to some random country that he looked like he might be from, ICE tells his lawyer that they don't know where he is" story makes local headlines; but that is about it.

I realize that Slashdot is a good headline for melodramatic techie myopia; but domain-name seizures are boy scout stuff by the standards of ICE's bread-and-butter activities...

This one [washington...endent.com] was pretty classy. Nothing says "due process" like denying a mental patient access to care, and then deporting him to a country whose language he doesn't even speak, and from which he isn't even descended, despite having evidence that he is a US citizen(and thus not even under ICE jurisdiction)...

This article [sfgate.com] is rather more general. Cool thing is, immigration violations/deportations are considered to be civil, rather than criminal matters, despite the fact that people involved in them are generally detained in jail-esque conditions. No public defender for you, sucker. And proving your citizenship is a total cakewalk under those conditions...

Obviously, if only by sheer statistical probability, ICE does manage to deport a fair number of authentic illegal immigrants every year; but they are about as callous and sloppy about it as you'd expect a bunch of jackboots with broad power and limited oversight to be.

How are these people not bonafide official U.S. citizens? Because they happen to be Hispanic?

The guy in the first article is from Puerto Rico. Citizens of Puerto Rico are, in fact, U.S. citizens and they are free to migrate anywhere to any of the 50 states, as any other American citizen would. The second guy was born in the U.S., the son of a decorated Vietnam War veteran (that's why he and his aunt had to locate his own and his father's birth certificates.)

I for one fear of this, and am now forced to take.fi domain for our business and simply make our.com a forwarder. We operate torrent seedboxes, nothing illegal in them itself, but many users seem to use it for illegal purposes, as DMCA requests for our US servers is "quite frequent", despite we are not US business, using US provider forces us to follow DMCA for the servers in question. Operating within completely in the legal domain, doing everything legally, does seem to provide us little to no safety against the whims of US goverment.

Yes, our market is likely to be used for illegal purposes. So are the tools of locksmith or the common kitchen knife possibility to be used for bad. And what the article shows is one of those.

The business plan of MAFIAA is outdated, and should be updated, but whenever new technology comes around something like this happens, but this is the first time actual tangible efforts has happened afaik.

I'm sick of this, the world is crazy. What matters is what the average person thinks and does, and businesses as well as goverments SHOULD fear the population. It's the only way for humanity to get the most out of our lives, and the most progress.

You cannot stop progress. I sense a darknet to rise if this becomes too common.

Anyone know the domain registrars in question? Is it everything ICANN controls or specific domain registrars? That would show which registrars to avoid.I'm also curious why they did not shut down piratebay etc. as well? what is the pattern on the sites closed? ie. what is the pattern by which they do the seizing.

I just finished watching a video of stampeding bovines at Target, trampling a few people to get a small discount. After seeing something like this, I understand why government and business hold "the people" in such contempt.

I'm also fascinated at how the great revolutions of history actually managed to get started. Perhaps it was because of the lack of things to do in a world without electricity and telec

Zip and RAR and PAR are used to distribute illegal software, WAREZ, etc. as well as legitimate business items..

I've never seen them used for anything legal. They are tools of the thief stalking the night, with no legitimate uses whatsoever. We've all seen the token legal zip file, but come on, who actually downloads these - we all know file compression was invented to facilitate illegal downloading! Internet Explorer was invented to browse illegal archives, everybody knows this and that it has no other real uses. In fact, we all know Turning invented computing so he could download porn without paying... and some

We don't live in a tyranny but we are moving in that direction. What about having nearly half of our income taken by force and most of it passed on to others whether we want it or not (tax/welfare), how about a tax system so complex that it is impossible not to break the law and where we collectively spend over $250 billion (yes with a b, look it up) on accountants just to comply with it. How about when we are forced to buy a specific health insurance policy even if we don't want one (Obamacare)? How about

I certainly agree with the quote in theory, but I also feel that it has to be broken because of the nature of society. In my town, there were some pretty nasty red-light runners. I was almost hit several times. So when they came to take away part of my liberty by installing red light cameras, I wasn't so upset. It was a trade off that would make the world better.

Yes but red light runners don't just have their property seized. They can go to court and argue it wasn't them, demand to see evidence, and generally defend themselves. Your PD's traffic enforcement doesn't collect names and then go seize their cars because they were used in the commission of a crime. Even red light runners have a right to due process. I have no problem with red light cameras either - or law enforcement in general. I have a problem with just rampantly interfering in civil disputes. Illegal distribution and bootlegging denies the property owners income, but isn't theft since that denies use of tangible property. Unless you steal the sole manuscript it's a bit rich to call it theft; it's generally not something that requires active prevention since it doesn't deny the rightful owner use of it. Nor is it a matter of public safety - it's strictly a civil dispute over distribution rights and compensation.

I've been thinking recently that North Korea is probably boosting its economy by buying stock short, then sinking ships, shelling South Korea, etc, to drive the prices down. One could actually make a very large profit that way. Or I suppose they could just be nuts, sometimes it's hard to tell.

I'm not from the Americas, but I thought the DHT only dealt with national security issues, terrorist threats, natural disasters, and other high priority issues that affected the country. I'm not quite seeing torrent-finder.com as that, a torrent site I haven't even visited despite being a pirate. Is this honestly the same organization behind providing supplies to Katrina victims, as protecting private businesses against business models in crisis?

Well the Obama admin, seems to have this heart-on for the term of "man made disasters", so I suppose being a pirate and copying something would qualify.

Now some stuff like knockoff electronics, and actual items I can see the government wanting to go after and shutting them down. In Canada, we do this all the time, because cheap knockoffs can be an actual danger, but this stuff? Nah, most if it is the government trying to flex it's muscle and avoid due process.

Except that this enforcement emphasis is biased in favor of protecting the rights of a collective (the MPAA/RIAA) at the expense of the individual. And this is worse than (theoretical) communism, where the collective represents the people.

The government is taxing me to protect the property rights of a small group. The least they could do is to levy a tax on intellectual property* and use that to fund enforcement. Instead of picking my pocket in the name of national security and diverting that revenue to someone else's benefit.

*Which raises the issue yet again of why, if IP is property just like my house, the gov't doesn't assess a tax on it.

The 5th Amendment says that "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". Due process means that one must be found guilty in a court of law by a jury of their peers.

And since when did the mission of DHS become copyright enforcement? And where did they get the unilateral authority to act as judge, jury, and executioner?

Last time I checked, "copyprivilege" infringement required a civil suit by the person who held the privilege to begin with? Were these domain holders sued? Were they found guilty (liable) by a court of law?

Is the US government out of control and operating outside the bounds of the Constitution?

If you made it to the 2nd paragraph of the NYT article, you would know the sites were taken down with a warrant issued by a United States District Court. I would assume these sites were investigated and found to be distributing faked goods and infringing copyrights. Hardly No due process.

Not to defend what they are doing as I don't like it either... but from TFA it seems they did have a court order to seize these domains. The question is, how those court orders were arrived at.

The torrent site seemed the most troubling as you can't really see how an order can be issued against what they were doing. The majority of the sites seemed to be selling counterfeit material like clothes and handbags; still iffy but you could see where possibly customs could have a hand in shutting down transfer of illegal goods.

I believe it's in section 506 that criminal infringement is outlined. There is no civil suit requirement, and as in any criminal investigation, the government can seize evidence and the means used to commit the crime. In this case, it looks like the only one of the sites seized that may be problematic is torrent-finder.com.

Not to wear tinfoil but it sounds like a Law Enforcement dry run for bigger operations..gov is "testing" to see how their methods are going to work in real life, if things will stick, how the public reaction to be.When the horse bolts out of the barn, you better have to grab a pre-tested lasso before data gets to far out.

No one will admit how much data leakage happened since the late 90s with p2p flooding data out of.gov, R&D, and medical offices in the West.

The 5th Amendment says that "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". Due process means that one must be found guilty in a court of law by a jury of their peers.

When there's a criminal proceeding, items which are evidence in the proceeding have always been subject to seizure prior to trial. The 5th Amendment has never affected that. Also, items being used in an ongoing criminal act are subject to seizure. It's no different from the cops finding a robber in the act and seizing his gun, or catching a drug-runner and seizing the car with a secret compartment hollowed out in the seat that he was using to hide his cargo.

Last time I checked, "copyprivilege" infringement required a civil suit by the person who held the privilege to begin with? Were these domain holders sued? Were they found guilty (liable) by a court of law?

Changing a DNS entry does not deprive anyone of "life, liberty or property".

You're mistaken on the purpose of the Constitution. It isn't there to provide life liberty and prosperity. It is there to limit the federal government to a specific set of powers. This is the federal government overstepping by a pretty broad margin the scope of powers defined in the constitution by exploiting either of the two loopholes: the general welfare clause or the interstate commerce clause.

Trying to argue that this falls under national defence wouldn't hold water either.

The government wouldn't have anything to do with internet enforcement. It would only be tasked with preventing other companies from regulating traffic. Net neutrality, at least in the form proposed, wouldn't at all give the government the ability to do this sort of thing.

Where is there any connection between the Shia Iranian government, and the sternly (as in "we hate the Shia") sunni terrorists of Al-Qaeda? "Is this another of those "WMDs in Iraq" things you people pull to justify the failed attempts at neo-colonialism?

The DHS is doing this because they can't send FBI to other countries. The next step is predator drones launching hellfire missiles into apartments of suspected downloaders. Everyone in the US cheered when those navy snipers picked off those Somali pirates that held that captain captive...

Whatever you think of copyright, and of torrent-assistance sites, it seems that much of what was caught in this sting are sites that sell knockoffs - dealing with that and other clear trademark issues I don't have quite as much of a problem with.

Were the seizure warrants mentioned in TFA's image actually issued and reasonably sensical? Could have a "bureaucrats who don't understand technology" issue w/r/t the technicalities.And let's face it, such sites seem to be aiding and abetting distribution even if they're not doing the actual distribution.

I was concerned for my personal safety (and the safety of the public at large) when I found out that people were hearing songs and seeing movies without a proper license to do so.

Who knows what could have happened had these sites not been taken down. A dirty nuclear bomb? Another 9/11? There's no telling what these "music and film watchers" might have unleashed. Thank you, The Government!

this will probably be modded down, but I do find it unbelievable that in the U.S. there are org's (Sea Org's ?) that are so powerful that both domestic and foreign policy (ACTA, ITO etc) are held-up as examples of "good practise" to the extent that what they want becomes law.

John Gilmore's quote was always an oversimplification. The net itself doesn't do anything but move packets. The people that use the net are the ones that find ways over, under, and around censorship. And this is censorship. We can argue about whether or not it's justified (and in the case of websites selling Chanel knockoffs as the real thing, it might be) but the fact the ICE and DHS have exerted control over ICANN is not good.

I'm a US citizen, born and raised here. The prospect of my government having the power to control the web scares me shitless. It's time to start working on a decentralized, cryptographically sound successor to DNS. It's also time to get serious about IPv6 and IPSec (encryption at the network layer) as a way to foil deep packet inspection.

Wasting tax payers money protecting music and movie industry instead of all the middle class workers who want file sharing who make up majority of
voters! People will fight back on this one, can't arrest every person in north america, and in the process they'll further worsen the american dollar, especially when
they are forcing file sharers to secure domains and servers out of country.
In grand scheme of things, movie and music industry will have to learn how to make money off banners and online marketing like rest of us, best thing we can do is run them out
of money, and cut their abuse of government funding, with no money for lawyers , and hitting them where it counts, we can aspire to true freedom.

"In announcing that operation, John T. Morton, the assistant secretary of ICE, and representatives of the Motion Picture Association of America called it a long-term effort against online piracy, and said that suspected criminals would be pursued anywhere in the world

Here, they are in , China, Russia. Now fuck off and go prosecute them after you talked so high and mighty. i would like to see you do it.

The Supreme Court has already decided that prejudgment seizures of property are unconstitutional if not accompanied by notice and a hearing on the merits.
See: Fuentes v. Shevin
I don't see why this wouldn't apply to domain names as well.
Wonder how long it will be before this statute gets challenged.

WTH are they doing messing with copyright issues? This has nothing to do with "Immigration and Customs" either.

Homeland Security should be protecting us from all these supposed "DANGER DANGER DANGER!" things that are out there that we are so scared of we are supposed to be letting the pervs at the TSA play with our junk and feel up our kids for.

Homeless and starving families right here on our own soil, health care is a mess, bridges are falling apart, all of our "national defense" is half-way across the world, we are borrowing all our operating money from Asia...but hey, who cares, someone is downloading last week's episode of "Bones" they missed - send out Homeland Security!

Exactly. We in the other half spent 8 years saying the same about Bush. It's like the whole thing is rigged to flip-flop every 8-12 years, just enough to keep each side in fighting spirits and everyone distracted away from that top 1-2%.

It didn't matter, but it might in the future. The Tea Party is the last hope for a government that actually stays in its Constitutional box. I don't care what you think about particular people involved with it, just get out there and support less government.

Bullshit. I know quite a few Tea Partiers and they will take away every last right I have as soon as they get the chance. These are people who only make a stink when the party they don't like is in power, doing the EXACT SAME THINGS that the party they do like was doing before. How many Tea Partiers do you know who said anything at all about the Bush admin's declaration that Americans only have freedom of speech within "Free Speech Zones"? It's not about liking or disliking the people involved in it, it

The Operators of the site knew that distributing copyrighted content is illegal, and that getting targeted was only a matter of time. Granted they tried to get around it via linking to other sites, but that tactic isn't new. Heck, even seizures are common in the war on drugs, and in counterfeitting operations etc.

What is a bit odd is ICE being the ones shutting them down. That might set a bad precedent.

Technically, they didn't distribute copyrighted content (which is legal if the copyright owner allows, by the way). They told other people about where the content was available. In fact, you've done so yourself by merely talking about them (only two steps away instead of one). I bet you're in league with the filthy pirates! Sending ninjas now.

It's a matter of intent, something the law can and does take into consideration. Google et al. are shielded by the Betamax decision, because they're not promoting illegal uses. Incidental illegal uses (even if they constitute the majority of actual use) are not a problem, legally, but, as the Grokster case established, once you begin promoting the illegal uses, you've crossed the line.

I have no idea whether Torrent-finder did promote illegal uses, but that's the question this is likely to hinge on.